Thursday, August 25, 2005

Michael Economides on CNBC 08-25-05.

1.) Russia - "First Yukos was destroyed and taken over by Rosneft, now you have Sibneft, the fourth largest, being taken over by Gazprom, so 50% of Russian oil production is being re-Sovietized, and the Soviet Union did not have a very good track record in oil production."

2.) Chavez - "Even before the assassination insinuations he was militant enough, and I'm sure he's not going to be a happy camper for us."

3.) China - "The yuan has been re-valued and it will make it a lot easier for China to buy oil. They have gone beserk already last year, look for China to increase it's energy demands and oil purchases significantly."

"All of these things are a hurricane level 5, perfect storm to increase the price of oil towards $100."

On OPEC: "OPEC is not very relevant; inadvertently OPEC is not relevant because it has no excess capacity to manipulate the market. If anything, every time the price of oil goes up, OPEC's exploration and production budgets go down, because what is their incentive? Make no mistake: they like $100 oil."

On whether Americans are being gouged: "No, we are not. Because we don't really have an oil policy in this country. The recent energy bill was a bloody disaster when it comes to that. You cannot talk about energy independence unless you address the transportation issue. It doesn't matter how many degrees you change your thermostat and air conditioning for example, it won't change the oil imports, because you don't use any oil for power generation. There are a lot of facts that people just simply avoid talking about."

"It's the first time ever that we have reached a real parity between supply and demand, so any one of these little events that we are talking about, have an amazing effect on the market."